an atheist through and through

When I was younger, maybe about eight or nine, my grandparents took my sister and me to visit my great-aunt. She lived in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, and it was the first time my parents had not accompanied us. My grandmother told us to go for a walk, follow the fence up onto the mountain and back. And I didn't. I led my sister up the path onto the mountain, and forgot all about following the fence. After about half an hour of talking and playing and wandering around, I realized we were lost.

I knew that I should have been able to get a general idea of where I was by the sun, as it had been on our backs as we walked up the path. I knew that if I walked back toward the sun, I would find our way back home eventually. But there were so many trees I couldn't orient myself. We had stumbled off the path, and could not find our way back.

My sister was the first to panic. I had been holding it together for her sake, but when Jess started to freak, it was nearly impossible. I told her that we would find our way back, that all we had to do was follow the slope of the mountain and we would find a road, and from there we'd have no trouble finding our way back. When we did that, and only ended up in bushes, not a paved road, I lost it.

Like the good little Christian children we'd been raised to be, we cried and prayed for help. None came. Finally, I told Jess that we would go back the way we'd come and try to retrace our steps. By this point, the sun was beginning to set, and I knew that Jess was imagining a long and fearful night on the mountain, because she kept asking about bears. I didn't have an answer for her, and so we stopped talking, lost in our own anxieties and imaginings. In the silence, we could hear a voice shouting, so far away as to be almost inaudible.

Our grandmother. We followed the sound of her voice back over the mountain until we ended up in the road almost a mile away. I think that was the moment my faith in the Almighty began to crumble. And I realize that I must not have been very strong in my faith for it to be so irreversibly damaged by something so minor.

The killing blow to my religious leanings came when I was sixteen years old. I prayed that God would make me a better person. That God would teach me something that would change me profoundly for the better. And then my very first boyfriend raped me. On Christmas Eve, of all nights.

For a while afterward, about two years, I told myself that it had happened for a reason, that it was all part of The Plan To Make Starky A Good Person. It was my crutch, my lifeline. It was my delusion. It was the only thing that kept me sane during that dark time. And I knew that I was starting to finally heal and move on when I realized that if there really was a God, He had one hell of a funny way of answering my heartfelt prayer.

Some people will say that I turned away from God because I was angry at Him for answering my prayer in such a way, that it has made me a better person and I am blind to that fact. I will admit that at first, I was angry. I felt betrayed, by the boy who said he loved me and the God who was supposed to protect me. I won't deny it. But when the anger faded? There was indifference.

I no longer care one way or the other if there is some higher power guiding my life. It won't change the way I live, or the things I hope for, or the way I treat others. It doesn't matter what pretty words I offer up to the heavens.

a bitter pill to swallow

This article left me in tears. I don't understand how people can be so cruel to the children they are supposed to love and protect and care for. I don't want to know what kind of sick fuck you've got to be to be so cruel to a child. And it's shit like this that makes me wish I believed in hell. There is no justice in the world, none at all.

Maybe it's just because I'm crazy hormonal, and suffering a huge disappointment, but seriously. I can't take the bullshit. Miss P is officially late, and shows no sign of wanting to show up. And Sid doesn't know it, but I took a pregnancy test yesterday. It was negative.

I will say no more about it.

This means that I am probably hypo again. Which I also don't want to say anymore about, but I need to get this out. If I tell Sid what I'm feeling right now, he won't understand. And I can't handle that right now.

I hate being sick. I hate that it makes me different. I don't mind it, usually. Normally, I'm just happy to be feeling okay again, and I'm eternally grateful that I have an illness that is manageable. But I hate that every month, I have to walk to the pharmacy to pick up my levothyroxine, and that everyone can see me walking home with my pill bag. I hate that I have to plan my meals around that pill, that I can't eat when I'm hungry if I'm in that three hour window, that I can't just up and go somewhere without dragging my medicine with me in case I can't get home in time to take it. And when I think these things, I feel so ungrateful. I should be glad that I am so lucky: I have insurance that pays for my bloodwork, I live in a country where I have access to the medicine that will make me feel well again.

So right now I'm feeling a little bit a lot like shit. Compounding that, Sid doesn't know I took a pregnancy test already, and he's trying to be helpful by telling me that starky, you never know, it might not be your thyroid, maybe you're pregnant. I don't have it in me to tell him I do know, I am not pregnant, it has to be my thyroid. As much as it hurt to tell myself that, I don't have the heart to do it to him.

the Mansons talk spawnage

A few days ago, I came up with a title for an entry, and it was, to my mind, perfect. And now that I actually have the time and the privacy to write, I can't remember what it was I'd thought up. And I don't know what's happened lately that I feel the need to record for posterity.

OH, let's start off with a gem: if my period is late this month, I'm either hypothyroid again, or pregnant. I don't know which at this point, all I do know is that I'm pretty icky feeling and waiting to see what happens. For the past week and a half, I have been nauseated and miserably tired. You see? It could go both ways. Either way, methinks I'm going to end up getting my thyroid checked, so in that respect, the situation is lose-lose. I'm going to end up with needles in me either way.

The second gem: if I am pregnant, it was entirely planned. Oh yes, you read rightly. Part of me is scared to fucking death at the decision. Another part of me is insisting that Sid and I are doing something very stupid, and that I should bail now while I still have time. The third part is just sitting back in disbelief at the fact that Sid has come around to the idea of spawnage. I imagine I will have more thoughts on this matter if/when I get a positive test.

Giving up my four-cups-o-caffeinated-goodness-a-day habit has been excruciating. Literally as well as emotionally. I loves me some coffee, almost as much as cheese or chocolate or ice cubes. Going without makes starky a sad panda! At first, that's why I thought I was tired and sick, but once the unholy headaches eased up, I still felt like shit, so I tossed that notion out the window. I still allow myself one cup a day, but to me, that's like taking just a bite of cheese, just one ice cube, just one little piece of chocolate... It's just a tease.

catching up

Sid came home on the 11th.

I wish it had actually been as simple as saying it makes it seem. The week leading up to that was filled with bitchwork, and the day before homecoming was insane. Insane. The cats picked up on that and vomited all over hell's half-acre as soon as I finished cleaning.

The morning of, we were expecting rain. When I woke up at 6, it was drizzling, and everything was wet. So instead of my white dress, I wore my black one. With that long black thing on, and my hair curled (THAT was interesting), I thought I bore more than a passing resemblance to Mrs Lovett from Sweeney Todd. Indeed, that night, Sid mentioned unprompted that I'd looked just like her. Minus the whole dark eye-makeup thing; that look has not been my thing for years now.

Cory came with, as it's not every day a friend of yours goes on deployment, and on the way to the base, we got stuck in traffic. A real gridlock. A car had broken down in the downtown tunnel, blocking all lanes of traffic. The cars were backed up for miles. And we sat with the car shut off for nearly half an hour, with me freaking out the whole time. I was convinced the Nassau would come in and the sailors disembark before we could get there.

I was wrong. By the time we got on base and found a place to park, the Nassau was pulling in. We were not as late as I'd imagined. For the next forty minutes, I stood in the baking sun...waiting. Did I mention I didn't wear sunscreen? Pasty-white starky, standing in the direct sunlight for a prolonged period of time? You know where this is going. I got good and fried.

Apparently new parents get to come off the boat first, and normally it wouldn't have bothered me, but for some reason, that day it really stuck in my craw. What a meager way of making amends for forcing these men away from the births of their children. "Oh, hey, we'll let you schmoes of the boat first, so you can finally see your new sons and daughters, and fuck the rest of the childless assholes." Yeah, that day it was really like a punch in the gut. Kick me while I'm down, why don't you.

It didn't matter, though, because Sid was right on the tails of those guys. As the crowd started to cheer, I turned to Cory and said, "we should get closer to them, Sid's expecting us to be over at the tent," and on the way over, I saw a bald guy, who could have been Sid from the back, but I wasn't sure, and I gave him a good look and noticed the blue platinum wedding band. It was Sid! Totally serendipitous, how that happened. We found each other right away in that big crowd.

Anyway, he's home. And while I'm happy to have him back, don't get me wrong, I wish that he'd stop spending so much time with his computer or his video games and do something with me. Anything. I helped him wax his car yesterday, just so I could spend time with him. Last night I broke down and told him how I felt, because it was obvious that he was not going to stop with the ignoring me unless I made him. And I didn't want to make him. But it's been almost a week. And I missed him. And I think that after five months apart, he can deign to put the controller down, shut off the computer, and spend some time with his wife.

Oh, and remember all that shit I wrote that I didn't want Sid to see? Stalking-ass motherfucker found and read this blog. Yes, that's right, Siddy, I called you a stalking-ass motherfucker. I only found this out because he teased me about my Brad Pitt dream.

AWKWARD.

searching for reason where there is none

A few months ago, a friend of Sid's was raped on the boat. I'm sure he spared me the full drama of the entire situation, but needless to say, there was a span of time where she didn't want to be around any men, and he called me asking for help.

Like I was supposed to know what to say and do for this woman. Because being raped suddenly gives you magic mind-reading powers, usable only on other rape victims or something.

News to me, I tell you. I wish I'd known about this sooner.

I told him to just be patient with her. After something like that, it's hard to know who to trust, and he should just chill out. If she wanted to talk to him, she'd come to him, but to just back the hell off in the meantime and give her some space.

Apparently she's talking to him again. He's told her a bit about my own experience, and asked if, when they get back, she would like to talk to me. From what I understand, she's open to the idea.

I don't know how I feel about that. On one hand, I wish someone had been there for me after what I went through, someone to tell me that it would get better, and listen if I wanted to talk about it, and not judge me and tell me that I should be feeling this way and not that way, and why didn't you press charges? I would like to be that person for her, if I can.

And on the other hand, I'm afraid that I may do more harm than good. After all, I'm not a psychologist. I'm just someone who's been there, in that spot where you don't know who to trust, or what to think, and nothing makes sense, and everyone is telling you how you should feel. What can I do for this woman? Who do I think I am?

Someone who hasn't been there just doesn't know what it's like. Sid surely doesn't. As sympathetic as he is, and as understanding as he tries to be, he just doesn't get it. It's been six and a half years; I've accepted what happened, made my peace with it and moved on as best I can. I can explain to him what occurred, I can tell him how I felt and how it affected me, but I will never be able to make him understand why I said and did and thought the things that I did. I have stopped trying. Things like that don't have to make sense to anyone. They don't have to make sense to you, the person who is going through it.

Sid keeps asking me, "Why does she still have feelings for the guy?"

I don't know, any more than I know why I still had feelings for my boyfriend when he raped me. It just is. Fuck the reasons why. Sometimes there isn't a reason for things.

sick to death of talking about my thyroid

With less than a month (OMG!) left in this deployment, the home stretch seems to be an eternity. And I am tired of talking to Sid about my medication, my bloodwork, my symptoms, my side effects... I'm just tired of it. He's not here to see the changes that have taken place, and he asks about it constantly. He's operating under the misguided impression that I am not the same person I was before, which is not something I ever actually said. I had made a blog post about it, and (stupidly) cross-posted it to a site I frequent and that he sometimes checks out, and he blew it all out of proportion and now, to his mind, he's coming home to a Pod Person or something.

The post in question was made in the depths of absolute alienation and discovery. I wrote about what I was feeling at the time, and it was by no means an objective look at my situation. Cory, who has been around to witness my subtle metamorphosis, assured me one day, unprompted, that I have not changed so terribly much. I relayed his words to Sid, who apparently never heard a word of what I said, because he's still convinced I've been replaced by a perky, cheerleader-type version of Starky.

I made the mistake of telling a few relatives, with the stipulation they never tell my mother, because she would blow it out of proportion to the point where, if I didn't get hold of the rest of the family before Mom did, she'd have everyone under the impression I have a goiter the size of a baby's head or something. Gory, false details are very important to my mother. The truth? Not so much.

Anyway, so now I've got a handful of people inquiring after my health, not including Sid, who asks nearly every day. And it's getting old. I know...everyone means well, and they are trying to understand what I'm dealing with. I understand. And I appreciate that I have people who care about me. But I am sick to death of talking about my thyroid.

something so simple, something so symbolic

I'm ready to cut my hair. My ponytail is 10 inches, long enough to be of use to Locks of Love, which is the only reason I have let my mop reach this length.

It drives me crazy. The longer my hair gets, the more temperamental my scalp gets. While I do think my hair is beautiful, and I love the way it looks when I wear it down, it's just not for me. It gets to tickling my face, and the skin on the back of my neck breaks out, and when I try to sleep at night, the fan kicks up stray hairs to tickle at me and make me think there's a spider in my bed.

This has been quite an experience for me, letting my hair grow long for the express purpose of giving it to someone in need. I always regarded my natural hair color as boring. And I find that it isn't! I stopped dyeing it so that it would be all one color when it grew out, and I see now that it's natural color isn't a mousey and drab brown, but a beautiful shiny deep brownish red.

Through something so simple, appreciating my natural hair color, I've actually come to appreciate myself a lot more. Instead of wishing for some aspect of my body to be different, it's easier now to focus on the good things about myself.

And of course, there is a deeper reason why I have decided that now is the time to cut my hair. It wouldn't be Starky's Emo Moment of the Day otherwise! This is my way of letting go of that "baby dream". I'm tired of hanging on to the hope. I'm tired of feeling as though it should happen to me and feeling pissed off and sad when Sid changes his mind or something. Because in all my pregnancy dreams, I've had long hair. And so cutting it short is like cutting loose the dream, you see?

I am so ready to take this step. Growing my hair out has been so symbolic of my journey of self-acceptance and healing, and cutting it feels like the next step down the path of accepting what is, rather than longing for what what should be or could be.